I took a little break, a pause,

juat enough time to pour

a stream of water down my throat

to cool the space around my heart.

Somehow the chill warms me

so much more than the fire.

These things more often than not

make very little sense.

Magpie chatter skips across towering eucalypts,

those tall and crooked grandparents

of the bushland, sharing a cup of morning dew.

There is a knowing shared between them;

the bird, the bark, the branch.

We all are only passersby,

waiting to alight the train.

From forward, twisted,

backward, winding railway tracks –

whichever run most parallel

to our own lives.

Sometimes you lose motivation.

Sometimes the spark fizzles out.

But there’s always a path through the forest –

to find it is what life’s about.

Sometimes a pause, a thought,

a plane passing overhead,

a black cat guarding the stairs,

something scurrying in the night,

the warm glow from the kitchen

sprawling across the back deck

– a nocturnal nudist

in a small town.

A sombre silence echoes around the silver staircase,

spiralling from stained glass down through the decades of steps and stone

to brown brick floors, walls batting every humbled sigh back and forth, above, below –

sombre silence echoes the mood of the church bell ringer –

the rope has broken.